In this week’s episode of Agenda, guest hosted by Ray BLK, Ray chats to OGD from East London music collective NSG. In the episode, Ray chats to OGD about releasing a mixtape in lockdown, the creative process behind their tracks and more. Ray also plays Agony Aunt, answering questions sent in from fans via social media.
ODG on releasing a mixtape during lockdown…
'You can’t do a lot of PR stuff so that’s a bit long but in terms of the music creating… we basically created the project before lockdown. The last song we recorded from the project was probably January… February. So we were just waiting for mixing and stuff. It was kinda smooth. The only thing was some video shoots.. we couldn’t shoot some videos.’
OGD on what the name NSG stands for…
'NSG is a lifestyle. It’s whatever you think. Anyone can be NSG. The old meaning is a bit explicit so I can’t really be saying that … Yeah, it’s whatever you think it is. Naija slash Ghana. Non-stop grinding. Whatever you think it is.’
On the creative process behind putting out music…
RB: 'I’ve been around you guys in the studio but I wanna know how you guys actually create a song together. Is it one person doing their part and then leaving it up to everyone else to do whatever they want, whenever they’re free? Or do you guys sit in the room together and jump on the mic one after the other?'
ODG: 'It depends. Some songs, we’ve all been in the studio and all six of us have dropped our ideas, then the producer will say ‘yo, this sounds like a hook’ and they’ll arrange it. Because I’m a producer as well, for the stuff I’ve made, I just start the beat. Whoever is in the studio records their ideas and then certain people will come after - when they hear the song’s a banger they’ll jump on after. For instance, Dope and Mxjib are always last at recording, because they never turn up to the studio! So they’ll come after. They’ll hear the banger and be like ‘yeah yeah yeah’ and they’ll jump on it. That’s why you hear them last on the song!’